Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme
What would you do in our position? Imagine you were Oxford
Preservation Trust and you had to make the choice between assisting
with flood relief or preserving precious green space. Would you wait
around to find out whether our land is going to be compulsorily purchased
knowing that it will be left harmed and spoiled? Or would you stand and
fight? Knowing that if we stand back from a fight, it makes the work we
do seem just a little foolish? (with apologies to ‘Love Actually’)
The management of land is a partnership between man and the
environment. This is never more obvious than at Oxford Preservation
Trust’s Hinksey Meadow where rare ancient flower-rich fields, classified
as MG4 grassland, have been farmed in the same way for centuries by
taking the hay off the water meadow once the flowers have set, and then
allowing cattle to graze. Nature in turn has rewarded us all with the
sweeping green landscape abundant with wild flowers, including an ever
-ncreasing colony of Oxford’s own Snake’s-head Fritillaries. Nestled in
behind the Botley Road, the fields wrap tenderly around the village of
North Hinksey and the Willow Walk path retains the fragile rural character
of a bygone age before the city reached out to shake hands.
The Oxford Flood Relief Channel is being promoted by the Environment
Agency, who have recently showed us their latest plans. As planned, the
channel will cut a swathe through these precious green fields, open to
everyone all day every day, as it stretches out along the west side of the
City from Botley to Kennington. The channel would be 60 metres across,
running the whole length of Hinksey Lane. Ground level will be lowered
and trees removed to keep the channel free of debris when it floods,
altering the character of the area and reducing groundwater levels across
most of the field so that the current flowers cannot grow and thrive any
more. Once dug up or compacted by construction machinery, the hay
meadow cannot be restored to its original state; the ecological
complexity, evolved over centuries, will never return. It is simply
impossible for humans to reproduce.
Further down, the channel takes a wide sweep up alongside Willow Walk
to meet, we are told, a necessarily very large and high new bridge of
engineering quality and proportion, where more trees will be felled, to
allow water to flow freely under Willow Walk and continue downstream.